Category: publishing

“The removal of the books is occurring nationwide, part of a long-delayed, post-Sept. 11 federal directive intended to prevent radical religious texts, specifically Islamic ones, from falling into the hands of violent inmates.” The removal was ordered “out of a concern that prisons had been radicalized by inmates who were practicing or espousing various extreme forms of religion, specifically Islam, which exposed security risks to the prisons and beyond the prisons to the public at large.”

Booksellers aren’t at all happy about the economics of big sales of the new Harry Potter. “Everywhere you go there is huge, ridiculous discounting by the chains. They are literally not going to make one penny out of the book. It is stupid — just throwing money away … The world has gone mad.”

“A Pentecostal teaching assistant who quit her job at a foundation primary school after she was disciplined for refusing to hear a child read a Harry Potter book is seeking compensation for religious discrimination. She claimed that the book glorified witchcraft.”

Tapped out for money, the county considers the plan as a way to keep libraries open. “When you outsource library services, the locals still own the buildings and contents but everything else, including the hiring of local staff, is managed from afar. It might someday be the norm for all kinds of public services. But there’s something undeniably different about hiring a business to oversee which books you and your kids can browse, to decide how library Internet access is controlled, and what penalty you’ll face when the dog eats a borrowed Harry Potter hardcover edition.”

“The 12 universities that make up the Committee on Institutional Cooperation have agreed to let Google digitize up to 10 million of their collective volumes — generally those from the most distinctive parts of their collections. The announcement brings to 25 the number of universities involved in the Google project, which is being hailed by some scholars for the way it will assure online access to volumes that have been largely available only in a few locations and that are in danger of decomposition.”

BookExpo Canada, the huge publishing industry exhibition held at Toronto’s Harbourfront, is basically a big schmoozefest for booksellers, publishing houses, and authors. And that kind of close annual contact can only be a good thing for the industry, right? Um… right?

“Veteran poets triumphed Wednesday night at the 7th annual Griffin Poetry Prize ceremony in Toronto’s Distillery District. B.C.’s Don McKay, 65, nominated for the Griffin Canadian Award on two previous occasions, hit the mark with his third nomination, taking the $50,000 honour from a field of three… McKay’s success was matched by U.S. poet Charles Wright, 71, whose most recent volume, Scar Tissue, bested three other contestants to take the Griffin for best International Poetry, also worth $50,000.”

For the last seven years, crime novelist Patricia Cornwell has been stalked, online and off, by a man who claims that she stole his ideas, hates Jews, follows Hitler, and is conspiring to have him killed. Cornwell has moved three times in order to escape his presence, and now, she is suing him for libel in a case that could have wider implications for online discourse.

So you think landing that big book advance puts you on Easy Street? Think again. Your problems have only just begun.

Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wins the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. “She beat five other contenders for the £30,000 women-only award, including Kiran Desai, shortlisted for her Booker Prize winner The Inheritance of Loss. Adichie’s novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, is her second work and set during the Biafran War of the 1960s.”